Wednesday, 8 April 2015

Richard Diebenkorn at the Royal Academy

I had a very
welcome day to myself in London just over a week ago. I went to visit a few
exhibitions I was keen to see, a treat I seem to have less and less time to do
these days.

I went largely to
see the Richard Diebenkorn retrospective at the Royal Academy, a small Alex
Katz exhibition at the Timothy Taylor Gallery in Mayfair, and then Marlene
Dumas at Tate Modern.It was exciting to
be in London, jumping on and off tube trains; riding endlessly long escalators
( I particularly like the Death Star like architecture of the Jubilee Line);
dodging traffic in Piccadily; and even finding myself walking alongside Justin
Vernon of Bon Iver and Volcano Choir, whose music I really love, at one point.

I started my day
with the Katz show, a particularly favourite artist who never fails to
disappoint, and this show of his recent “Black Paintings’ was no exception,
before heading down to the Royal Academy just ten minutes walk away to see the
Diebenkorn exhibition. I must admit I feel very uncomfortable walking around
Mayfair amongst all the very moneyed knobs. It just brings out the class
warrior in me. This time, as I walked through the rather obscene Burlington
Arcade the queue of said suits all waiting to have their expensive shoes shined
seemed to make me bristle. It’s the image of the shoe shine bent at the feet of
these people as they sit staring at their phones that seems to get under my
skin. Anyway, I digress…Diebenkorn:

Richard Diebenkorn at The Royal Academy of Arts, London

I have only come to looking at his work with any
great seriousness in the last three or four years as my interest in landscape
painting has developed. His work is rarely seen in the UK, so this seemed too
good an opportunity to miss. The actual show was contained in just three
galleries, and was a bit smaller than I anticipated, but in a way, this scale
seemed just right as an introduction to the painter and the three distinct
phases of his work: the early Abstract Expressionist works; the development into
the representational work of the landscapes, still lives and figure paintings
and drawings; and the final well-known ‘Ocean Park’ large abstract paintings.
These seemed to distill all the preceding ideas into one much more
sophisticated and mature body of work. The "Ocean Park" series, begun in 1967
and developed for the next 18 years, became his most famous work and resulted
in approximately 135 paintings. Based on the ariel landscape and perhaps the
view from the window of his studio, these large-scale abstract compositions are
named after a community in Santa Monica, California, where he had his studio.Apparently, like many colour field painters such
as Rothko, Diebenkorn, in this series of eventually 135 paintings was initially
influenced by Matisse’s ‘French Window at Collioure’ (pictured) and ‘View of
Notre Dame’ when they were exhibited in the US for the first time.

Henri Matisse, 'French Window at Colliere' oil on canvas, 1914

These are two truly radical paintings from
Matisse’s ‘experimental period’. As Diebenkorn found the Matiise paintings, I
found the ‘Ocean Park’ canvasses on display genuinely challenging and difficult
works, despite their ‘easy on the eye’ light infused pastel colours. The zones
of colour combinations and their quietly assertive ‘push and pull’; the radical
divisions of horizontal and vertical space; the layering and re-working of the
thin washes of colour (again very Matisse-like) seemed almost like a puzzle
whose secrets you had to unlock. For a long while I found the paintings just
seemed to be almost aggressively staring me down as I tried to reach a better
understanding of them. When I found myself managing to do this after a long
time looking, it felt somehow like a door had opened up into another world or a
veil had been lifted. It was pretty powerful stuff.

'Ocean Park No 63'

I liked the rest of the show too, but the earlier
work seemed less resolved and more of a searching enquiry towards the language
of the ‘Ocean Park’ series. With Diebonkorn’s more directly representational
work, particularly the landscapes, it would be easy to make comparisons with my
own landscapes, which are balanced between a representational and abstract
language. His San Francisco Bay Area landscapes of strongly lit roads and
hills; with the ocean’s horizon line nearly always traversing across the top of
the painting and the shadows used to break up the space of the picture plane
certainly reminded me of my own treatment of space and the picture plane. I did
indeed enjoy these a great deal, and they looked great across the room and
through the door of the adjacent gallery. I always enjoy seeing these sort of
views.

'Cityscape', oil on canvas, 1963

The early abstract paintings were also really
exciting, although often very De Kooning and Gorshky-like, apart from their
more modest scale. I just love the energy in the gestural mark making, and
think it’s a shame that these things often have an unfashionable status these
days, unless it’s done in a more knowing and often pre-conceived way. It is said that the colour and light in them
were inspired by the fact that the artist was based in Alburquerque, New Mexico
at this time. I can’t help but think of ‘Breaking Bad’ or The Handsome Family
in relation to Alburquerque, where both of these very fine things are based.

Untitled (Alburqueque), oil on canvas, 1953

My final exhibition was to see ‘The Image as
Burden’ at Tate Modern, a retrospective of the work of South African born,
Netherlands based painter, Marlene Dumas. This was a bad choice, after later
becoming more aware of the ‘Adventures of The Black Square’ exhibition at
Whitechapel, which looked much more interesting in retrospect. At the time, the
Dumas show, with its promises of painterly, political expression of the human
form and the portrait looked really tempting, but in reality it was a huge
disappointment. The paintings, whose images are largely derived from found or
personal photographs, but mainly found ones, just didn’t hold up to a show of
this size. When Dumas got it right, some of the paintings were just really
terrific, but this seemed to be the exception rather than the rule. Most of the
time, I found myself getting increasingly irritated by their empty gestures and
the sense that so many of the paintings just look too unfinished; they more
often looked like enormous sketches in paint, rather than a more serious
commitment to making a more meaningful statement of some kind.

A very good Marlene Dumas painting!

An enormous painting by Dumas that looks like a big oil sketch

And the paintings of Amy Winehouse and Phil
Spector (with and without wig) just felt embarrassing.Dumas is seen as near the top of the art
world bubble in terms of status, but I was left wondering how did that happen? Compared
to contemporaries like Richter and Tuymans it all seemed so under developed and
lacking in rigour; the paintings inspired by bold impulses that didn’t go any
further. I paid a small mortgage to see it too….

Phil Spector with wig by Marlene Dumas- a bit dodgy (the wig and the painting!)

On the train home
I found myself sat next to a bloke called Frank, who was currently studying for
his post graduate studies in Fine Art at the Royal Academy. He struck up conversation
after seeing my paper bag of postcards from the RA. We talked at quite some
length about his experience of studying there; a forthcoming 3-month student
exchange to Japan he was about to participate in (lucky devil!); and our shared
disappointment with the Marlene Dumas exhibition. Frank also knew Birmingham
quite well, and had done his first degree at Nottingham Trent University. We
also chatted about our individual practice and my work as a lecturer in
Birmingham. It was really nice to chat, and we bid each other well as he
departed at Leighton Buzzard (what a great name place that is).After watching him jump off the train I found
myself reflecting on how middle-aged I have felt lately, and more depressingly
others perception of my middle-agedness. I tend to forget my age most of the
time, and like most people I feel mentally much younger, but lately I have felt
older and wonder where it is all going…

1 comment:

Cheers for this post Shaun. I can't believe I hadn't twigged there was a Diebenkorn show on in London. I guess it just proves how inward-looking and focussed on my own stuff I've been in recent months.

Diebenkorn was always one of my favourite painters, (and still is in many respects). His Whitechapel retrospective back in the 90s was the first chance I'd had to see any of them for real, after years of reproductions, and I worried they wouldn't live up to my expectations. In the event, they were even better than I'd hoped.

However preoccupied I may be at present, I really need to find time to zip down for a day to see them again. Shame you weren't too impressed with the Dumas show, but I suspect I need to see that one too, just to find out for myself.

I just found time to drop into the Glen Ligon-curated mixed show at Nottingham Contemporary which is well worth a look, even if it does completely waste the rare opportunity to see an Ad Reinhardt by lighting it so appallingly. Ligon's own stuff is pretty good though.